his face sullen, followed by Sheila Howard. She wouldn’t look at Minogue. Her eyelashes batted rapidly and her hand went to her hair. Finbarr shambled in and stood next to Ciaran, his eyes downcast too. With his head tilted slightly and his distracted gaze returned to the floor, Deegan waited for the three to come to a standstill.
“It’s yourself that’s in it, then,” he said.
“You’ll be caught,” Minogue whispered. “All of you.”
Deegan didn’t seem to hear him. He shuffled forward.
“You’ve only yourself to blame,” he said. His leather soles crunched pieces of mortar. A vise had fastened about Minogue’s ribs. He wondered if he would be able to stop himself from crying out.
“From what I heard, it was our Mrs Howard doing all the talking in here. Did she tell you everything you wanted to know, now?” They had sent her all right, and they had sat listening.
“Except who killed Jane Clark,” said Minogue.
Deegan’s eyes suddenly twinkled, and he smiled broadly.
“Well now, can’t you figure that out yourself?”
By the tone, the menacing humour, Minogue knew. He stared into the folds of flesh in which Deegan’s eyes were almost completely hidden now.
“You did it.”
Deegan made a mock curtsy but his eyes stayed on the Inspector’s.
“At your service, Your Honour. Oh, the Howards are no different from any other of the well-to-do. They always need someone to do the dirty work. Well, there was a lot of money spent that night, let me tell you. And they’re still paying for it. Amn’t I right, Mrs Howard?”
“Shut up with that ‘Mrs Howard’ stuff!” Ciaran shouted. “I’m about sick and tired of it.”
Deegan put on a surprised expression and peered around at Ciaran.
“You’re right, Ciaran,” he sighed. “Begging your pardon and all.”
He turned back to the Inspector. Something about Minogue’s face brought the smile back to Deegan’s.
“After that night, sure, we had Naughton in the bag too. The way things worked out… Two for the price of one, you might say. We had plenty on our Tom after that night, so we did. So our Tom did his bit afterwards too-not saying he didn’t do well out of us. He did. And by us, I don’t mean the Howard clan.”
Naughton’s gun, Minogue thought. Had Deegan given him the gun?
“Well, I hear they caught up with poor Tom the other day,” Deegan went on. “And he blew his brains out? He always said he’d do that if and when they came for him. I didn’t set much store by that. The drink talking, says I. But that’s why he wanted the gun, I suppose, for when they came after him. His own, I mean-the Guards.” Deegan shook his head again and chuckled softly.
“The poor divil,” he added. He gave Minogue the stage wink which the Inspector remembered from their meeting in the pub. “Ah, but his heart was in the right place.”
Ciaran snorted and started to say something but bit back his words and folded his arms again. Over his thudding heartbeat, Minogue still heard Ciaran’s angry breaths in his nostrils.
“Take it nice and easy there, Ciaran,” Deegan murmured. “Sure the man has a right to his facts. Oh, but she was a bad egg, that one. Jane Clark. Oh yes. She put up a rare oul’ fight of it, so she did. But tell me,” he squinted into Minogue’s eyes. “Alo Crossan. How the hell did he get you into this mess? He’d sooner piss on a Guard than talk to one.”
Minogue didn’t answer.
“Crossan’s a wanker, so he is,” Deegan went on. “Matter of fact, he’s as bent as a ram’s horn.”
Minogue’s expression prompted Deegan to grin again.
“You didn’t know he’s a queer? That’s what he has the chip on his shoulder about. He’s bent, man. He was pally with that bitch. She told me she was going to get Alo and take everyone to court over this. Me, Mrs Howard here-oops, Sheila-the Howards…everyone. It was Dan gave her the clap, she tried to tell me, not the other way around. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”
Deegan choked off his mirth and threw a glance of knowing candour at the Inspector.
“But, sure, who can you depend on these days?” he said.
Ciaran took a step forward, unfolded his arms and shouted, “Look.” With a terrifying, unnatural speed, Deegan turned, brought up the pistol and shot him square in the chest. The shell flew across the room, Sheila Howard screamed and buckled, Ciaran fell back and Deegan kept firing. An ejected shell bounced off Minogue’s eyebrow as he wrenched himself over, the chair giving way under him. Deegan fired steadily, without pause. Through the deafening reports and the shouts, Minogue heard bodies land heavily on the cement.
Minogue came to rest on his side and opened his eyes. Smoke clouded and shook in the room as Deegan’s gun went off. Minogue’s cheek was on the cement. He saw legs and a hand, blood on the wall next to the floor. He was shouting himself now and he felt his bladder give way. Deegan stopped shooting and stepped toward the arms and legs. Minogue stopped shouting. Kathleen, he thought. His eyes were locked onto Deegan’s shoes. As long as the shoes faced away from him, he was still… Deegan was whispering hoarsely.
“Christ, Ciaran, you’re such a fucking iijit,” he gasped, breathing harder. “You poor bastard, you damn near ruined it all with her… And as for your mate, God forgive me, I warned you, don’t say that I didn’t, now…”
Deegan’s feet shuffled slightly as he fired down. One of the hands fluttered and Minogue went limp. Someone was moaning. Deegan’s shoes turned toward Minogue. The piss was warm over his legs, almost a comfort. The clarity of everything in the room, in the world, came to the Inspector as something utterly horrifying and familiar. A vision flared in his mind but it did not distract his utter attention from Deegan’s gun: the surly, grey-green sea, the stricken ridges of the Burren stretching toward the horizon under clouds that looked like massive slabs themselves. He saw the orange flare as the roof burst into flames impossibly reflected on every wave, the porpoises racing through the black waters of the estuary into the open sea…and, always, that face, the young stranger watching.
“As for you, you poor fuck, I don’t know…” Deegan murmured, and he pointed the gun at Minogue’s face.
“Don’t,” Minogue whispered.
The report seemed louder now since the lull in firing had intervened. Deegan went sideways with a grunt. Minogue tore open his eyes in time to see Deegan’s surprised face fall obliquely by him.
“Jesus, Jesus,” he heard Deegan wheeze from the floor.
Minogue tugged and drew up his knees to turn the chair but he could not. He turned his head as far as he could and saw Sheila Howard’s head resting against the wall. Her chin was jammed down on her breastbone and purple spots were on her face. Though her eyelids looked closed, he thought he saw a liquid glint by her eyelashes. Her arm was lying on her chest and she held the pistol loosely on her thigh. Where she had pulled up her jumper to get the gun out, Minogue saw a band of skin where blood spidered and dripped onto the floor.
Deegan made the wet, choking sound of a smoker summoning phlegm. Minogue heard his clothes rustle slowly along the floor, his huge limbs rubbing as he tried to rise. There was a glottal gasp and the rubbing stopped.
Cold, the floor. Minogue had driven his knee into the cement as he fell and it had that warm watery numbness he knew would turn to pain. An aura of blue smoke, moving slightly, circled the light bulb. He rested and breathed and watched the layers of smoke forming, sliding across one another and settling into stillness. The sting of cordite needled the top of his nose as he listened again. An irregular sigh of breathing turned to rasping breath and a short, faint squeal before returning fainter. Jesus, not now, he thought. Was one of them alive and getting up? Schemes flew into his mind, each desperate and quickly discarded. Elbow his way across the room and see if anyone had a penknife or a sharp tool. There must be some tool in the house, in the main rooms-but how to get over these bodies? He felt the cold only as a relief, grudging proof that he was still alive.
Then came a bubbly snore. He stared at Sheila Howard and saw her eyes open, staring across at his. A small new line came from the side of her mouth. She closed her eyes and coughed. A gout of blood oozed down her chin and her body made a spasm. She rolled onto her side and coughed again. Minogue froze and watched her creeping and scraping her way across the floor, heard her gurgling.
“Take it easy now,” he whispered and immediately realised how absurd the remark was. She took a deep, rasping breath and whispered in a tone so lucid that Minogue was startled.
“I’m bad, I can’t feel where…”
“If I can get free,” he started to say.
